Quietly
by Cap'n Pirate Monkey
Summary: And here they are now, the three of them – mother, son and Shane, who should be the odd one out but somehow slots into place, as if he had been there all along. Lori stares out into the dark, listening to the gentle, familiar rhythm of Carl's breathing, and wonders if this is as normal as things are ever going to get


The world is ending in a storm of fire, and bloody teeth and spilt, glistening viscera, and Lori Grimes is fucking her dead husband's best friend up against a tree.

It's been three days, maybe (her internal calendar is off-kilter) since they left Atlanta, and any last, lingering hope of Rick's survival came crashing down with the tonnes of napalm, coating the city streets like an oil slick. She can never return home. It's likely there's no home left to return to. The thought makes her vaguely nauseous.

She'd packed the trunk of her car with keepsakes; their wedding album, pictures of Carl from every year of his life, even the good china Rick's mom had bought them as a wedding gift. Weighed down with memories, the car ran out of gas fast, and Shane made her choose only a few things to take with them. Forced her to be brutal with her past, still warm in its grave. She'd screamed at him, then; hit out with bunched, useless fists, and the bastard had just stood there, silent and unflinching even as she rained blows down on him, called him all the names under the sun. And when she was done…when the anger and misery and frustration of the last few days had drained from her like an abscess…he'd held her, and the only thing he'd said, so quiet as to almost go unnoticed, was "It wasn't just you that lost him. I did too."

Later, with the chemical stink of napalm drifting in on the breeze and the cold certainty of her husband's death aching like a distant bruise, she leaves a sleeping Carl under Carol's watchful eye (Lori figures she'll be glad to get away from that pig she calls a husband) finds Shane, takes him out into the woods. They don't speak. The failing afternoon light filters through the trees and they fuck without finesse, desperate and breathless; they are alive, even as the world around them dies. They communicate their joy and uncertainty and despair in a frantic braille, all clashing hipbones and semi-coherent gasps. She needs this. Just for a moment, a short while, to pretend that there is nothing else in the world but the two of them.

It is not an act of love.

They don't speak as they dress, avoid each other's eyes and focus, instead, on the bracken-scratches and bruises, accusatory tattoos, temporary reminders of their combined moment of recklessness. And what scares Lori more than the sudden darkness of the swiftly-arrived evening, more than the thought of her son, disappeared, when they return shamefaced to the camp, is that she hadn't thought of Rick once.

Shane, for his part, has the decency to at least look a little guilty, even though Lori knows his attitude towards casual sex falls quite some way short of penitent. She combs her hair for leaf-litter, picks fragments of twig from her jeans, making a terrible hash of not looking suspicious. Thank god, then, for the Peletiers; grim-faced Carol, her pale, sickly daughter and her taciturn husband, who are insular and secretive and make few demands of Lori and Shane, much less ask difficult questions.

"I'm sorry," she tells him, a day or so later. She's washing clothes and he comes to her, touches her shoulder, tentative, like she might shatter. She pulls away, instinctive, and he looks a little hurt, the kind of hurt that tells her he'd been expecting exactly that reaction and still doesn't like it. His eyes flit to the ring that hangs between her breasts, back up to her eyes, and there's an accusation there that he just can't voice – _it was your idea. You fucked me first _– as if it absolves him of all wrongdoing.

"Are you?" he says. His voice is so quiet it's barely a rumble in his throat; his eyes are narrow, questioning, and they bore into hers with an intensity that scares and arouses her in equal measures. She'd thought about fucking Shane before, back when things were normal; her marriage had been strained, and she'd thought about fucking Shane because he was there, and because he wasn't Rick. She'd wondered, in passing, what his broad fingers would feel like crushed between her thighs, what he'd feel like pinned beneath her. And, truth be told, she still wonders, because a quick, furtive fuck in the woods just isn't the same thing. It was different back then – just an idle fantasy borne out of resentment. But Rick is dead, and the world is dying with him, and all bets are off now. What good is the social contract when there aren't enough people to uphold it? What is adultery when your husband is dead?

His gaze never leaves her.

She chews her lip until she tastes blood.

"I don't know," Lori says. And then, because it's the truth: "I'm scared, Shane."

Shane comes to her tent in the night, slips up behind her, a warm ghost in the dark. The heat of his skin is delicious, his presence unfamiliar but reassuring, arms tucked around her waist like she's something precious, something to protect. They lay there like that for a time, Shane dozing quietly against her, and he and Rick begin to blend into one. Memory and reality, past and present, Shane, unseen, anonymous but perceptibly not Rick. And it almost doesn't matter, but her heart still hurts to think of him, a thin, pale corpse in a hospital bed miles away, alone.

And here they are now, the three of them – mother, son and Shane, who should be the odd one out but somehow slots into place, as if he had been there all along.

Lori stares out into the dark, listening to the gentle, familiar rhythm of Carl's breathing, and wonders if this is as normal as things are ever going to get.

The next time they fuck it's no accident, and as Shane braces her against him, an insane balancing act with only a tree providing stability, she takes pleasure in the thought that this time, they're both to blame. It's different this time; she marks him, intentional, her anger diffused into the bloody half-moon slits where her nails take purchase. Bark grinds against her naked back; his hands grasp at her thighs, her ass, her waist, travelling the length of her like he might never get to experience it again. Maybe he won't, she thinks, and nips at his lower lip 'til he lets out a growl, pushing into her with renewed ferocity. Perhaps they'll die out here, like this, naked and entwined in one another, fucking recklessly and with utter disregard for this dangerous new world.

Her teeth close around the soft, pulsing flesh of his throat. She tastes blood, sweet and coppery.

"What the hell, Lori," he says, but his heart's not in it – how can it be, when she's grinding her hips like that, pulling him in. And when it's all over, the two of them sweat-sheened and gasping and pressed so close they might as well be one person, she notices the swollen moat of purpling bitemarks just above his collarbone and smiles inwardly.

And then it seems natural for Shane to be around, ever-present, and even Carl latches onto him like he's some surrogate father, some replacement daddy-figure to keep him safe, and teach him to trap rabbits, and all the things Rick can't do anymore. It seems to Lori that it's something of a gift, a consolation prize in the face of everything that's gone wrong. He's a stable presence, determined, never passive, and Lori wonders if she'd figured him all wrong before, or whether the end of the world left the brash, cocky Shane behind, replacing him with a man risen to the myriad challenges of staying alive.

Carol notices the bruise, looks from Shane to Lori and back again, and she knows, as sure as the day is long, she knows. She says nothing. Her mouth is forever closed (unless prompted, invited to speak by her husband, the puppet-master, who pulls her strings and dictates her comings and goings, and god how Lori would dearly love to punch him in the fucking teeth.) It's not an official thing. They're not in a relationship. They're just two adults, sharing the burden of a changed world, letting off steam in the only way they know how. They fuck. Sometimes they argue, and it's everything Lori wanted from Rick – the crushing insults, the raised voices and baleful stares, the passion-aggression of naked reconciliation. They buoy Carl through each day, and breathe in quiet relief as each night passes without incident. They move, trailing Carol and her family behind them, ever searching for safety (until Dale, and his campsite in the hills where there is shade, and water, and company, and the nights become less of a chore.)

Most of all, they live. They adjust. They move on, as the world has.

Which is why when Rick returns – fifteen pounds skinner, a good deal paler but alive, so very fucking alive – Lori feels a familiar ache deep in her chest, a sorrow even as she embraces her husband, basks in the warm glow of their shared happiness. And she looks over his shoulder at Shane, and there's something in his eyes she can't quite place, and she thinks _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore, when will things stop changing?_

For the second time since the world ended, Lori watches the life she has built life dissipate into pieces, slipping through her fingers like so much fine sand.


End file.
